The image above is another exclusive still from the coming short film, “The Blue Umbrella,”which Pixar will release in June in front of the feature film, “Monsters University.”

Directed by Saschka Unseld, the six-minute film features a score by composer Jon Brion and the voice of singer Sarah Jaffe.

Unseld described the process of pitching to John Lasseter, Pixar’s chief creative officer, who himself is a strong proponent of short films (his 1988 short “Tin Toy” later inspired the hugely successful “Toy Story” franchise).

“Pitching to John is amazing,” Unseld said, adding that there were other development staff in the room for his five-minute pitch. “When I told them the story, I could just see how they followed every word and how they imagined everything in their head how it would play out like a film.”

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‘The Blue Umbrella.’ All Rights Reserved.

He said over the course of production of “The Blue Umbrella,” which was about one-and-a-half years long, Lasseter served as a mentor and gave his feedback every two to four weeks. “He’s fantastic as a test audience,” Unseld said. “He’s able to see the short as what it is at that point while forgetting all the iterations we went through.”

Unseld said one aspect of the film that took a number of tries was the appearance of the faces on the umbrellas. “I wanted to go a different route, for it to feel more like traditional animation from the early Disney 2D days,” he said. “If the faces were in the umbrella in the cloth or raindrops, it would have felt weird. A stylized idea of faces with emotions made more sense.” He said to get that look right without being distracting to viewers took awhile.

He also played with the exposure time of certain scenes, and filmed at 12 frames per second, to vary the rhythm and tone of rain strokes.